Denzel Washington gives Gladiator II his muscle

Tagline for Ridley Scottmovie from 2000 Gladiator was concise and effective: “The general who became a slave. The slave who became a gladiator. The gladiator who defied an emperor.” That pretty much tells us all we need to know about the film’s plot, which promises an exciting journey of ups and downs that Gladiator mighty delivered. One more tagline Gladiator II (in theaters Nov. 22) should be a little more complicated: “The warrior who becomes a slave, the slave who becomes a gladiator, the gladiator who defies two emperors, but also some other bad guys and maybe a kind of good guy, but also the warrior/slave/gladiator is actually a Roman prince who is heir to the empire, but no one really knows.” The simplicity of the past is missed.

There is a lot missing in the sequel. Gone is the rich visual texture of its predecessor, which was shot on film, replaced with the flat, dimly lit thinness of digital. Joaquin Phoenixhis brilliantly sniveling sinister turn as the evil Commodus is given a pale impersonation in the form of the literally pale Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechingerlike a pair of brother emperors flailing around in the background like campy Halloween ghosts. Most shockingly, the great emotional sweep of the first film is nowhere to be found Gladiator II; the sequel is epic in length and spectacle, but not in feeling.

Paul Mescalrippling and rubbish, plays Hanno, a peasant-soldier who lives in Numidia, on the north coast of Africa, with his wife. Their relative idyll is soon violently disrupted by the Romans, who were prone to violent disorder in those days, and Hanno becomes a spoil of war, sold into the gladiatorial system and sent to Rome to fight and die – or, as he had done. preferring to take revenge. Hanno arrives in a city marked by conflict, suffering under the vain rule of its twin emperors, the infrastructure creaking with the weight of corruption, rebellions arising in the streets and in dark chambers where powerful people plot a coup.

One of these conspirators is Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), daughter of Marcus Aurelius and former secret lover of Maximus, the hero of the first film. She is now married to Pedro PascalGeneral Acacius, a formidable military man who has grown tired of all the bloody conquest demanded by the emperors. Through a series of slightly contrived circumstances, Lucilla soon realizes that Hanno, now a rising Coliseum star, is not Hanno at all, but rather Lucius, the son she sent away for safekeeping after the events of the first film.

So there is family drama here, a homecoming that Hanno wants no part of. Gladiator II is about the hope for a better Rome, but also about a justified disgust for the whole imperial enterprise. Exploiting these cracks is arms dealer and gladiator Macrinus, a shrewd and fickle operator played by a flourishing, fabulous Denzel Washington. He is the true machinist of history, playing an invisible long game in his quest for power and retribution.

There are many moving parts in the narrative, and yet the jumble does not create a sense of a dense and fascinating city in turmoil. Some binding energy is missing here; the many parts of the story never coalesce into a convincing whole. Despite a 148-minute running time, Gladiator II is oddly rushed, zigging this way and that as it tries to whip up a storm of dynastic struggle and intrigue. Hanno gets lost in the shuffle and becomes less of a character than another piece on the board.

Of course, a movie like this can always fall back on its fight scenes. Scott goes all out in that connection, staging arena fights involving baboons, sharks, a rhinoceros, boats. They are impressive in a technical sense, but they also conjure up some of the brutal horror of the first film. These fight sequences had stakes; in these the results are for obviously foregone conclusions. And as always, a heavy reliance on CGI (which doesn’t look that great) proves more alienating than awe-inspiring.

However, Scott manages some moments of wonder, especially as the film builds towards its climax. There is, at long last, the feeling of terrible momentum Gladiator II has spent two hours trying to create the idea of ​​the story unfolding in real time as these characters try to bend the will of fate in a righteous direction. It may not be a coincidence that this is where Scott weaves some Hans Zimmer‘s original score, such a soaring and evocative piece of music. The tension and rumble of an older mythos descends from this minor tale, thereby elevating it. Hanno’s arc suddenly means something, his place in it Gladiator firmament finally ready.

It takes a long time to get there, however, but a middle-of-the-road trip through the Roman desert, occasionally enlivened by one of Washington’s fascinating flourishes. His is the film’s real portrait of danger and mad drive, of the carefully planned overthrow of a vast and crushing system. Hanno, played with quiet power by Mescal, is no match for Macrinus and his ruthless, sophisticated maneuvering of the ancient world’s precarious hierarchy. And he hardly needs to pick up a sword to do it.